Article
How to protect your success? How to be so different that nobody can copy you? Why solve an already solved problem?
The modern Coca-Cola bottle design history started in the 1910s. In this decade, Coca-Cola became a dominant player in the soft drink space. It had iconic branding, unique flavor, they were a first-mover and practically invented the category. And all of this was accompanied by innovative marketing campaigns. However, success attracts imitators and during this period Coca-Cola saw a surge of copycat brands that were attempting to walk the path they paved illegally.
Trying to bank on health trends of the time, offering a blend of celery and cola flavors, there was a brand called Celery-Kola. This wacky combination tried to capture the fame of Coca-Cola while being appealing to health-conscious consumers. On the other hand, we have Koca-Nola, Kos-Cola, Toka-Cola, and other copycat brands that tried to emulate the exact flavor formula. Not only that, they even “borrowed” Coca-Cola’s brand colors, slightly altered the Spencerian script logo, and even tried to copy the bottle that Coca-Cola was using at the time.
Coca-Cola's business model in the beginning, and even today in some places, involves a strategic partnership, or simply franchising, with a network of bottling companies. So, Coca-Cola produces beverage concentrates and distributes them to their bottling partners. Bottling partners mix it with water and carbonation and package the final product. Later on, bottling partners distribute the finished products in their exclusive territories. Partners were the first to voice out their problems with the copycat brands and Coca-Cola had to do something to protect their business.
Why not patent the recipe? That seems like an obvious and easy solution to this problem, right? No. Instead of the patent, Coca-Cola chose to keep the recipe a trade secret. This was a strategic decision since patents have expiration dates, typically around 20 years. Once expired, the patent becomes the public domain which would allow anyone to use the formula. By keeping it a trade secret, Coca-Cola escaped the expiration problem for their recipe.
Why not trademark the brand and the logo? They already did this in 1906 but most of the products were sold from barrels filled with ice cubes which made the labels peel off. Even the parent company sent a letter to their partners in 1912 admitting that they didn’t have a way to protect their business.
Funnily enough, the best idea on how to tackle this problem came from a lawyer named Harold Hirsch. He made an emotional plea in 1914 to all their bottling partners to unite a behind unique bottle. Eventually, they voted to spend up to $500 to develop a new design for the bottle through a competition of the best glass manufacturers in the USA. The brief was simple but painfully clear:
“Design a bottle so distinct that you would recognize it by feeling in the dark or lying broken on the ground.”
Coca-Cola Bottle Design Brief
With a team of 4, C.J. and William Root, Alexander Samuelson, Earl Dean, and Clyde Edwards, the Root Glass Company was one of the entrants in a competition for a new Coca-Cola bottle. Dean and Edwards were sent to the local library to explore possible shapes for the new bottle. Over there, they stumbled upon an illustration of a cocoa bean that had a long shape and emphasized side ridges. This was the shape they took as a basis for their proposal and Dean, along with Samuelson, sketched a few versions on the linen paper and the team made a few sample prototypes. In the following days, the Root Glass Company filed a patent registration request for their design but without Coca-Cola’s recognizable embossing to hide their client’s identity.
In early 1916, Coca-Cola’s committee met to conclude the competition and the Root Glass Company’s design was the clear winner. The new Coca-Cola bottle was born.
Even though the competition was a success and provided a clear strategy to protect the Coca-Cola brand with the new packaging design, not all partners were immediately sold on this idea. For many of them, the glass bottles were the most expensive part of the price calculation and they needed to be nudged to make the switch.
To convince all partners, Coca-Cola started to do national advertising campaigns featuring the new bottle and by 1920, most of the bottlers jumped aboard and adopted a new packaging. Complete adoption coincided with the Roaring Twenties, also known as the Golden Twenties.
This was a decade that saw massive change and cultural shifts in the United States and other Western countries. In a span of 10 years, we had massive success of jazz music, completely new fashion styles, and overall economic prosperity. Most importantly for our story, the 1920s gave us the wider adoption of a new technology called radio and alcohol ban in the US. Radio enabled even greater reach of advertising campaigns and saw the introduction of celebrity endorsements. On the other hand, prohibition made room for wider adoption of non-alcoholic beverages where Coca-Cola was already dominant.
In 1923, the patent for the bottle was renewed and it just happened to fall on Christmas Day so the date on the side of the bottle was changed to December 25th, 1923, and the bottle gained a nickname the “Christmas Bottle”. Later, in the 1930s, Coca-Cola used Santa Claus for the first time in their marketing campaign.
As Coca-Cola became a leader in the soft drink industry it faced the inevitable challenge of imitation. The decision not to patent the recipe pushed them to make one of the best strategic decisions in the company’s history - to design a bottle. At first glance, it was solving an already solved problem.
Through a combination of creative design and effective marketing, Coca-Cola not only protected its legacy but also became an enduring icon of American culture, leaving a big mark on the world of beverages and branding. The Coca-Cola bottle, born out of the need to protect its partners and business model, remains a symbol of authenticity and the enduring pursuit of excellence.
